Tag Archives: Eve

The Digg button once used to be as ubiquitous as the Facebook Like button is today. And now completing its final exit to oblivion, Digg has been sold for half a million dollars, a fraction of the money that hopeful investors plugged into it. The official story is that Digg died because it was overshadowed by Facebook and Twitter.

That’s nonsense. Sure Facebook and Twitter drained some of the traffic out of the pool, but competitors like Reddit are still around. And Buzzfeed, which is just an uglier version of Digg, which hosts its own content, instead of aggregating to linked content, is doing well.

The problem with Digg is that it was never really a social community, it was a social media gaming forum. It was a game where you voted up things. It was gamed by power users and by everyone else until it stopped being a site where you went to see interesting things or kill 5 minutes over a lunch break and became a social media gaming grind.

Reddit works because it’s built around communities. Digg had no communities, it had factions and allies. It was EVE without the spaceships, but with the same drama. Everything that Digg could do, other sites could do better.

Want a list of goofy pictures and pop culture trivia geared to your hipster interests? Try Uproxx or Buzzfeed. You get the graphics up front instead of having to look at a white and blue interface. Want a community of people to yell at about politics, religion or Apple? Reddit has you covered. Or a bunch of other sites.

Want a place that looks like a social media version of an abandoned arcade game where no one is playing any more? Try Digg.